Baby Pac-Man is a hybrid pinball/video arcade game. Gameplay starts in video mode, where Baby Pac-Man is led through a maze to gobble up dots and avoid ghosts, identical to the original Pac-Man...except this time, there are no power-ups in sight. When Baby Pac-Man travels down one of two chutes at the bottom of the screen, gameplay shifts to pinball mode, where the player must play traditional pinball to score power ups and fruit bonuses. Losing the ball puts Baby Pac-Man back in video mode. The player must then finish off the dots or get caught by a ghost and lose a life to reopen the chutes.